Cheaper 16
Diana wandered through Zane's house with new eyes, cataloguing details she'd been too frightened to notice before. The furniture matched—dark leather and clean lines—but lacked the warmth of photographs or personal trinkets. No clutter on the counters. No mail stacked by the door. The only signs of life were the coffee mug in the sink and the jacket draped over the back of a chair.
She paused in the doorway to his bedroom. The sheets still held the ghost of their bodies, rumpled and twisted. Heat crept up her neck at the memory.
Her phone sat on the nightstand where he'd left it. Just sitting there. Waiting.
Diana picked it up, the weight familiar in her palm. No missed calls. No texts. She checked the battery—forty percent. He hadn't turned it off or hidden it away. He'd simply placed it there, within reach, as if he trusted her not to betray him.
The thought made her chest ache.
She set the phone down and turned to the bookshelf she'd noticed the night before, when she'd been searching for clues about the man who'd become her captor, her protector, her—
What was Zane to her now?
The shelves held practical volumes mostly. Immigration law. Criminal procedure. A field guide to Arizona flora. But tucked between a worn almanac and a Spanish dictionary sat a slim hardcover with faded green cloth binding.
Diana pulled it free. Pride and Prejudice.
The spine cracked when she opened it, the pages soft with age and handling. Someone had loved this book. Read it multiple times, judging by the way it fell open naturally to certain chapters, the margins marked with pencil notations in a careful feminine hand.
He is too proud, someone had written next to a passage about Mr. Darcy.
Diana smiled despite herself. She'd read this in high school, back when Mrs. Chen had still believed she could make something of her. Back when Diana had devoured stories about women who said no, who demanded more, who refused to settle.
Before Luis had made it clear that women in their world didn't get choices.
She turned to the front of the book. On the first page, written in the same neat hand as the margin notes, a name stared back at her.
Emily Bradshaw
Diana traced the letters with her fingertip. Zane's mother, perhaps? Or his sister? The ink had faded to sepia, suggesting decades had passed since someone had claimed this book.
She imagined a woman curled in a chair, losing herself in Regency England, escaping into a world where love conquered pride and prejudice both. Had she given this book to Zane? Had he kept it after she was gone?
The thought of Zane reading Austen made something warm unfurl in Diana's chest. She pictured him sprawled on this same couch, this book open in his large hands, following his mother's penciled observations. Learning about love from a dead woman's favourite story.
"Who was she?" Diana whispered to the empty room.
The house offered no answers. But the book felt like trust in her hands—another piece of Zane's carefully guarded heart, left out for her to find. Like the phone on the nightstand. Like the unlocked door.
Like the way he'd held her last night, as if she were something precious instead of evidence.
Diana clutched the book to her chest and returned to the bedroom. She settled onto the bed, back against the headboard, and opened to the first chapter.
It is a truth universally acknowledged...
RT: https://poa.st/objects/ece36d58-3c98-48a6-87e6-d65a08eb70ec
quotingOK, change of plan. Originally 50 Tints of ICE was going to be 40 chapters long. I decided instead to cut it down to 25 chapters and use the rest as a basis for a book 2 of 50 Tints of ICE, starring Zane’s fellow agent, Max Clayborn. Max, as you remember, was injured in his heroic battle against child traffickers. We’ll see him again next week. Tonight we’ll check in on Diana, who is about to make a very important choice.
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